My Father's Keeper
by smartyjonescrzy
Summary: Young Vincent Pyle relates his experiences and quest for answers involving his war-torn, shell-shocked father. Post-Vietnam. OneShot, told from Vincent's POV.


**My Father's Keeper**

_"Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."_

-Ronald Reagan

I don't have any recollection of what my daddy was like before the war. I was borned durin' the very end of it, so to me it always seemed like he'd been in one and then he was out. I don't remember anythin' about the war. I was real little when Daddy came home for good. But Ma said that Daddy was somehow dif'rent now that he'd gone to war. An' as I growed up, I learned more an' more about the boundaries that existed between my daddy an' the subject of Vietnam.

When I was little, I didn't know there was anythin' wrong with my daddy. He was an honest an' happy person. His face would just light up ever' time he finished his duties for the day an' came home to see me runnin' up to meet him. He's a major in the Marine Corps, see. Ma said he got promoted after he came home, but why was anyone's guess. She didn't tell me. He was a very compassionate person. He always wanted to help people whenever he could. As far as Ma could tell, he was the same that he always was. There was just certain times when he'd become someone Ma didn't know, someone I didn't understand. Someone I was afraid of.

I couldn't make the connection at first. I didn't realize that it was the newscasts what triggered it. I guess I couldn't have been more'n five at the time. I was playin' on the floor with Daddy, an' he'd turned on the television to see if the weather was gonna be nice for my very first campin' trip the next day. I forget exactly what we was playin' with, but all of a sudden, Daddy looked up at the screen an' saw some story that made him stop an' stare at it for a very long time. Lookin' back on it, it prob'ly was somethin' about the South fallin' to the communists in the North an' officially endin' the war, but I of course didn't know that at the time. I just didn't like the way he was ignorin' me, so I tried gettin' his attention. But he just pushed me away an' ran upstairs to his room like he was bein' chased by someone. He didn't come out the rest of the night. We still went campin' the next day. We had a real nice time. I didn't ask him about what had happened.

I guess I wasn't really curious at the time. But things just kept happenin' that I knew warn't normal, an' my interest in Daddy's past started to pique. The mystery bothered me day an' night. An' I resolved to find the answers.

There were times when I would wake up at nights an' hear cryin'. At first I thought it was my little sister Millie, cause she was real little then an' she cried all the time. But it wasn't her. It would always be comin' from my parents' room. I would sneak up an' listen behind the door on those nights, an' realized it was Daddy who was cryin'. Ma would stay up with him, sayin' things in the voice she used on me whenever I was hurtin'. I never heard exactly what she said to him, but it was a while before he quieted down again. Sometimes Ma would come out into the hall an' catch me. I'd run into the bathroom, sayin' I needed a cup of water. Ma went along with it, but she warn't fooled. She knew I knew.

Several years later, I asked Ma what Daddy was cryin' about. She said he had nightmares sometimes, when ghosts from his past would come an' haunt him so bad that it kept him up all night. Sometimes she could get them to go away an' sometimes she couldn't. I was confused, but I never asked her what she meant by it all. For the longest time after that, I thought there was haints in Ma an' Daddy's room.

It wasn't long before I was old enough to understand Daddy had been in the war. I didn't know anythin' about it or why no one wanted to talk about it. I just knew it as 'the war,' an' Daddy had been in it. I tried askin' him about it once. That wasn't a good idea. He just looked away from me an' said, "You're too young to understand, Vincent." We didn't speak to each other for the rest of the evenin'.

So I tried askin' Ma one time. She was in the kitchen washin' the dishes after dinner. Daddy hadn't come home yet cause he was workin' late. Ma said he was in a meetin' with other real important officers. An' I knew that ever' time he had a meetin' with other real important officers, he wouldn't come home till it was long past my bedtime. So I thought it was okay to ask. I entered the kitchen, scufflin' my feet on the tile floor the way I always do when I feel uncomfortable. I don't think Ma heard me cause she didn't look up. Before I started to think about what I was doin', I went right out an' asked her:

"Ma, what did Daddy do in the war?"

She dropped all her dishes in the sink, where they made a huge crash. She closed her eyes for a minute, lookin' mighty worried. I ain't seen her look so worried since the time Millie went straight to a friend's house from school without tellin' any of us where she was goin'. She just looked real pale an' sickly all of a sudden. She didn't say anythin' except "Oh, my," softly under her breath. Finally, she turned back to me an' said, "Vinny, you're too young to understand."

Now, that just made me more determined than ever to find out about my daddy an' the war.

I have this friend, you see. His name's Will. We live right down the street from each other, so we always played together a lot. Will's daddy an' my daddy worked together, an' they liked to talk together a lot. My daddy, he cain be mighty reserved when people try to talk to him about the war. Fact is, he refuses to say anythin' about it to anyone. Except for Will's daddy. Sometimes, all they would do is sit in a corner together an' talk about it so quietly no one could hear what they said. Ma says they connect on a dif'rent level cause they was both in the war together an' that it helps Daddy to talk about the war to someone. She says that when he remembers the dead, he's buryin' them at the same time. I asked her once if Daddy ever talked about the war to her. She said he told her some things, but there was a lot he wouldn't tell her. I guess those was the things he an' Will's daddy talked about together all those nights.

The next person I turned to in my search was an old, respected friend of the family; my daddy's sergeant, Sergeant Carter. I was named after him, you know. He's my godfather. He really is swell.

So I went to the sergeant's duty hut one day (I know the way there. You see, I've been there so many times before an' it's only a couple of miles from where I live. I'm friends with all the fellers in his platoon. Sergeant Carter's office is just as homey as Great-Gran'ma an' Gran'pa's place). I waited in there for him to come in. He's a wonderful person, Sergeant Carter is. I thought surely he could tell me what I wanted to know.

But not even Sergeant Carter could help me. He came in an' saw me an' automatically thought I wanted to do drills with the platoon as I always liked to do. But I told him it was dif'rent this time. I asked him about Daddy an' the war.

He made a motion of his head that meant he wanted Corporal Hummel to scram. He's a real smart feller, Lester is, an' he took the hint straight away.

Sergeant Carter stood there for a long time, stuttering like he wasn't quite sure about what to say. He didn't tell me any helpful things in the end.

"Well, uh…um…well…you were born during the war and…and your father was in Vietnam…and he got promoted, yeah, got promoted after he went to Vietnam…and, uh…um…yeah, I think that's…that's about it." He ran a hand through his hair an' sighed. "Does that pretty much answer your question?"

It didn't, but I didn't want to hurt his feelins, so I just nodded my head an' smiled. "Thanks, Sergeant Carter."

He was about ready to leave when he turned back to me an' told me somethin' else I wouldn't ever forget. "Look, kid. What's a toddler like you doing drudging up that ancient history? That all happened a long time ago in the past, and it's best to leave it that way and just forget about it, huh? Now go play ball or something and forget all about things like Vietnam!"

That wouldn't be the last time I was warned away from the subject.

It wasn't until I was seven that I figured out I didn't have to ask people to learn about my daddy's past. I was playin' with the piano one time when I looked up at the pitchers settin' on top of it. There was two pitchers in the middle, one of me an' one of Millie that was taken right after we was borned. Then there was this new frame close by that had them people in it that come with all the wallets an' ever'thing. That was for the new baby. An' then, right up next to the wall, was a big pitcher of Ma an' Daddy on their weddin' day. It was in this fancy, gold frame with a wavy border. Now, if there are two things that are my failins, they are that I ask too many questions an' I'm too curious for my own good. I couldn't help it. I wanted to know what it felt like an' so I reached up to touch it. Well, I ended up knockin' the pitcher over by accident. What I didn't know was that the big weddin' pitcher had a secret hidden behind it, an' I discovered it when I knocked the frame down that day. There, tucked in a corner where no one could see it, was a pitcher I'd never seen before. I pulled it out an' looked at it for a real long time. It took me a full minute to realize one of the fellers in the pitcher was my daddy.

He an' Will's daddy were standin' together, their arm over each other's back. Both of them looked purdy happy to me. They was smilin', though I couldn't really see their eyes too well cause they had their helmets on. They were both wearin' all green but their sleeves was rolled up to their elbows. Behind them was a bunch of funny lookin' green plants that I've only seen on television.

This was what my daddy looked like in the war.

I didn't have to be told by anyone to know. I hadn't even seen pitchers of the war yet, so I had no reason to be so sure. Somethin' in me just knew. This was the part of my daddy's past that ever'one seemed anxious to forget.

I didn't quite know what to do with my discovery. I wanted to confront my daddy about the pitcher but at the same time, somethin' was tellin' me to wait a while. I could hear Ma openin' the door, so I made my decision fast. I set the weddin' pitcher back up an' ran up to my room, where I tucked the pitcher in underneath my mattress. For years, no one knew I had it. Of course, that was mainly because from then on I insisted on washin' my own bed sheets.

As I got older, I started to learn more about what my daddy was like as a person. An' the more I learned about him, the more I realized I was like him. For us, ever'thing seemed to demand a simple explanation, even if there was an uglier, more complicated one lurkin' behind it. We wanted to always see things in a positive light, even though there was a lot of people out there who weren't really the way we chose to see them. People what steered away from their Sunday School lessons were just poor, misguided souls committing acts of moral sin. I didn't not like 'em for it. They just didn't know better. Even knowin' such evils existed, I stuck to what my parents taught me an' persistently looked for the good in ever'thing. (It may come as a surprise to you, but Daddy was awful strict when it came to teachin' us kids the difference between right an' wrong.) He'd left his stamp on me, all right, in more ways than one. Ma says with each passin' day I get to lookin' more an' more like him.

That warn't terrible, mind. My daddy was a wonderful person. He had his opinions an' he stuck to 'em. He had his blissful ignorance. An' he also had his failins, just like all humans do. But he loved my Ma an' he loved us kids. His heart an' soul was his family. An' we loved him in return. We always had a lot of fun together, whether it was all of us on a family outing or just father an' son time. He was truly wonderful an' I wanted to be the Marine he was.

Despite that, I felt like I didn't really know my daddy, that part of him was a mystery closed off from the rest of us, even Ma. I wanted to understand this person I revered an' loved. I didn't like the feel of the boundary he put up between us.

I was twelve when we all went to the Wall dedication ceremony. I never even got close to it. All I saw was a piece of shiny black granite risin' out of the ground. An' if I squinted real close-like, I could just make out my tiny reflection from far away in one of the panels. I wanted to take a closer look, but Ma told me that was somethin' Daddy an' Will's daddy had to do on their own. Millie warn't very interested. She wanted to go take pitchers of all the pink trees. I ended up watchin' my baby twin sisters Norma an' Grace play around a statue of three men. I had a lot of time to look up at their faces an' I saw the same look that Daddy always got when anyone mentioned the war. It was real sad, an' determined in a way, an' also haunted, like they'd just seen those haints that were livin' in Ma an' Daddy's bedroom. I looked at them for a real long time an' my resolve hardened. I wanted to know. I _needed _to know what they had been through that could've made them look that way.

When we came home, the first thing I did was go to the library. I rented out ever' book they had about the war. I hid them in my room with the pitcher, an' no one knew I had 'em. I read 'em in secret, so I knew I wouldn't be disturbed. I usually snuck up to the attic an' sat in a dark corner, readin' about the war my daddy had been in underneath the beam of my flashlight.

I'd had no idea about how complicated the war in Vietnam actually was. Most times I'd hide up there for longer than I'd originally intended, readin' about Ho Chi Minh an' the Vietcong an' the Tet Offensive until my eyes drooped. One time Millie came up after me an' found out what I'd been doin'. I had no choice but to make her swear to secrecy. But I could tell she didn't like it.

"If Daddy finds out, he's gonna be mad." She said. "Why go lookin' into all that anyway? Ma says Daddy just wants to forget about the war, an' we ought to honor his wishes an' not keep draggin' it out all the time."

"But that's the problem, Millie." I said. "Daddy cain't forget about it. An' I wanna know why he cain't."

I couldn't really explain to her real well why I felt I needed to know about Daddy an' the war. But she let me well enough alone, even though she didn't approve of it.

I read an' read until I knew by heart ever'thing the books could teach me about the war. But knowin' how many people was killed or who requested more troops wasn't enough. I wanted to know what my daddy's place in the war was.

The pitcher had been layin' under my mattress for six years. I decided it was time to confront my daddy about it.

I remember he was alone. Ma an' Millie had gone out shoppin' for new school clothes an' Norma an' Grace were still at their play group. He'd come home a little late, so he was still at the table, eatin' the dinner that had been left for him in the oven. I'd never been afraid to talk to my daddy about anythin' before. We was pals. But I was scared to show him the pitcher that night. I felt like I'd invaded his privacy an' betrayed his trust.

I entered the kitchen so his back was to me, scufflin' the floor in that bad habit of mine. He'd pushed back the sleeve of his khaki uniform to check the time when I cleared my throat. He turned around an' saw me standin' there. His eyes what are the same color as mine crinkled at the corners as he smiled. "Hey, Vincent."

"H-hey, Daddy." I tried to smile, but I felt too close to cryin'.

"What's botherin' you?" He asked, thinkin' I had some teenage problem on my mind that he could offer a simple solution to.

I slowly walked up to him an' pulled the pitcher out from behind my back. I handed it to him, tryin' to think of somethin' to say that could get him to tell me about the war. Somethin' clever that smart detective fellers always say to the suspects that gets 'em to confess ever'thing. But all my terrified mind could come up with was, "Is this you in the war?"

He looked at that pitcher for a very long time. I could only watch helplessly as his face fell into that look he always got, the look I'd seen on the statue's faces. I knew right then he wasn't gonna tell me. I felt bad for even showin' it to him. It was quiet for several minutes. His prolonged silence, combined with my guilt, durin' those few minutes was the worst form of punishment I've ever endured.

"Where did you get this?" He said quietly at long last, makin' me nearly jump out of my skin.

"I…I found it. By accident." I squeaked.

"Put it back, son." His tone wasn't angry. In fact, it was as gentle as a lamb's. He handed it back to me. I could only stand there in my tremblin', frozen daze.

"But…"

"Jus' put it back, son. Jus' put it back…" Daddy stood up an' slowly walked out into the livin' room.

I didn't put it back in its corner behind the pitcher on top of the piano. I put it back underneath my mattress. I still have it, too. When I passed by the livin' room again, I saw him sittin' in his chair, lookin' out the window. Ma an' Millie had come home by then, but Daddy didn't even acknowledge them. I tried goin' in there once that evenin' to try to talk to him, but Ma stopped me. She told me to leave Daddy alone. She never asked me what I did to make him sit there like that all night, though I'm pretty sure she knew. I'm grateful to her for never bringin' it up. She was really wonderful, my ma was. No one could have had a better ma growin' up than her. She was a person that knew a whole lot an' said very little.

I felt bad about showin' Daddy the pitcher, an' it really did kind of curb my curiosity on the subject. Maybe it was seein' an' understandin' how much hurt I brought upon him ever' time I tried to find out more. I didn't ever want to intentionally hurt Daddy. So I stopped tryin' to learn more about his service in Vietnam.

In fact, it wouldn't be until I was fifteen that I even thought about it again. An' then it was purely by accident.

It was Norma an' Grace's eighth birthday party. I didn't have any plans, so I had been given chaperone duty. Ma an' Will's ma were out gettin' their hair done an' Millie was out on a date. It was just me an' Daddy settin' in on a house full of third-graders.

They was playin' this big game of hide an' go seek, an' my sisters had begged me to be 'it' first. Daddy was downstairs readin' the paper when I went upstairs to look for the hidden girls.

Ma an' Daddy's room had lots of hidin' places, so I decided to look in there first. I'd long since known there was no haints in there, so I wasn't afraid to go in anymore. I started under the bed, then the bureau, then the big mahogany storage cabinets. Finally, I opened the closet, the last good hidin' spot in the room. No one was in there. I was about to close the door an' move on to another room when a beat-up old box shoved in the back corner of the closet caught my attention. An old newspaper clippin' was poppin' out an' I could just catch the big black word **'VIETNAM.' **Like I said before, my two failins are I ask too many questions an' I'm too curious for my own good. Once I saw that, I couldn't help myself. I just _had _to look in that box.

I sat down on the floor an' pulled it out to me, the hide an' go seek game forgotten. My hands trembled as I pulled back the flaps. I held my breath in anticipation. _This just might be the answer to my daddy's past that I've been lookin' for! _I thought. An' it was.

Layin' on top was a whole bunch of yeller newspaper stories all about Vietnam. The one on top had a pitcher of my daddy an' Will's daddy when they was still in the enlisted ranks. The article had a big headline that read, **'CAMP HENDERSON HONORS RETURNING VIETNAM HEROES.'**

My daddy, a hero? I'd never thought of him as one before. Now, I'd read all about heroes before. But they was the people in comic books an' on the news that did things like save people from burnin' buildins or stop evil plans aimed at takin' over the world. I didn't put my daddy in the same class as these people. To me, he was just a normal person. A right nice person, but a person all the same. It was strange to me. It was the first time I'd heard of anyone referrin' to my daddy as a hero.

I turned to the story underneath that one. It was even longer, an' as I looked up at the top I saw that it had come from the Mayberry Telegraph. I almost didn't recognize my daddy in the pitcher, because I thought for a minute that it was me. He looked so much younger than he was now. In fact, in the pitcher he didn't look all that much older than me. Funny, I never thought about my daddy ever bein' my age before. I was glad it included a pitcher because it provided a glimpse into what he was like before the war. An' from what I could tell, at least appearance-wise, he was a heck of a lot like me. His clothes was loose an' dirty an' his hair was long an' fell over his eyes the way mine did. He was also wearin' his ball cap at an angle, the way I always liked to do, only then I usually wore it all the way around backwards, with my hair stickin' out the little openin' in the back. It was purdy scary, I'll tell you. The headline at the top read, **'LOCAL BOY VIETNAM HERO.'**

There was that word again. Hero. Was he really a hero? If he was, then why did he hide it from us all these years? I shook my head as I scanned over the article. There was somethin' in it about him an' Will's daddy an' bombs an' holes an' bein' wounded, but it was very badly worded. I couldn't understand what it was all about. It just didn't make any sense.

What did he really do? I wanted to know. Carefully, I set the newspaper stories aside an' looked into the box again.

I pulled out a bunch of envelopes that were tied together with a ribbon an' set them aside. I knew they was letters between Ma an' Daddy, prob'ly written while they was apart durin' the war. An' I couldn't bring myself to read my parents' personal letters. Despite my search for answers, that was one thing I just couldn't bring myself to do.

The next thing I found was a bunch of thin slips of paper with name rubbins on 'em. On the back of each one was a date. Most of the dates were sometime in early 1971. I didn't recognize the fellers' names, but I knew who they were without bein' told. These were the names of dead men. These were the names of men my father knew.

I was gettin' close to the end. I gently laid the names aside an' looked at what was layin' in the very bottom of the box.

There was a bunch of medals lyin' around. I'd seen the ribbons on Daddy's uniform, but he'd never shown me the medals. Maybe he really had been a hero to get all of these things. I pulled out a whole handful of 'em an' set 'em aside. There was a bunch of pitchers scattered in the box, includin' a pitcher of the Colonel pinnin' medals on my daddy. There was some other ones, too. There was a black an' white pitcher of Sergeant Carter when he was a whole lot younger, an' one of Ma sittin' on a cannon, an' a bunch of black an' white ultrasound pitchers labeled 'Vincent.' I looked at those for a while cause they didn't look like me at all. I set those aside an' suddenly turned my head cause I smelled somethin' awful.

I looked in the box an' slowly pulled out the last item. It was torn into shreds an' eaten by moth balls. It was green, or looked like it used to be green. Dark patches of dried blood covered the cloth, an' if you put it to your nose, you could still smell death lingerin' in its folds. The smell had just plain refused to fade away over time. If I looked very close, I could just make out 'USMC' on the pocket. I gasped. This was Daddy's uniform.

This was the uniform my daddy had worn when he'd become this 'hero,' or whatnot. This was what he'd worn when he'd watched his friends, the names on the slips, die in Vietnam. This was what he had worn when he'd fallen, ready to accept the same fate as them. An' this was what he'd worn when, by sheer grace, he'd been lifted an' carried away to help. The uniform seemed to embody my daddy as a member of the war an' I wondered at why he kept it if he wanted to forget the war, like Millie said.

A movement in the corner of my eye caught me off guard an' I whirled around, freezing in horror. My daddy was standin' there in the doorway, lookin' down at me. He had a shocked expression on his face, an' his face was as pale as a ghost.

I'd been caught. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't say anythin'. I immediately felt ashamed of myself. I'd crossed the imaginary line an' fully invaded my daddy's privacy. It's true what Ma says. Curiosity killed the cat. I hung my head an' waited to be scolded.

But Daddy didn't say anythin'. Instead, he came over an' sat down beside me on the floor, his eyes glazed over like they was lookin' at somethin' only he could see. We sat together in silence for a long while, me crouched on the floor next to Daddy, who was huggin' his knees like a scared little boy. Then, slowly, it all came out. He told me about his time in Vietnam in graphic detail, not leavin' one thing out of his narrative. I sat quietly an' listened to what I'd wanted to hear for so long.

He told me about camp life, an' about his sergeant. He told me about his first leave when he came home an' I was borned. He told me about the enemy, how he'd gotten captured once an' how he escaped. He told me about the pain, the agony, the fear, the disillusionment, the loneliness he'd endured durin' his two an' a half tours of duty. He held up the strips an' told me about each of the men behind those names until I felt like I knew 'em myself. He told me how each of them died, an' how Will's daddy had almost died. That was the hardest part for him, tellin' me what he an' Will's daddy did to get each other out of danger, despite bein' injured themselves. He told me about what he could remember of the clearin' station an' how he'd come home from the war an unworthy hero.

When he was finished, I realized what Ma had said was true. He was dif'rent for bein' in the war, because the war was a part of him now, just like Ma an' us kids were a part of him. He didn't like to talk about it much, but ever' once in a while it would rear its ugly head an' remind him about it. Like an unwanted child that keeps comin' home, remindin' him that it was still there, would always be there, whether he liked it or not. He had come to terms with his memories, an' accepted them as part of himself. That was why he'd kept the uniform, the names, the medals, the newspapers. They weren't kept out in plain sight, but they were still there all the same.

I looked over at him an' realized he was cryin'. I reached over an' hugged him, tearin' up as I did so. I knew he was cryin' for the fellers lost in the war, because that was just the kind of person he was. But I was cryin' for him. I finally understood my daddy. An' I loved him, ever'thing about him.

-

I'm goin' to the Persian Gulf. I found out today.

I grew up on a Marine base. My daddy an' all my friends' daddies were Marines, so I guess it was only natural I wanted to be a Marine, too. I joined up as soon as I finished high school, an' I've spent these past few years under the very same sergeant my daddy got his excellent trainin' under; my godfather, Sergeant Carter.

Ma was cryin' when I told her the news. I comforted her as best I could, but it's hard to do when you don't really know what you're gettin' into yourself.

My sisters kind of accepted it, though I knew they didn't like it any more than Ma did. They were more lovin' to me than they've ever been these past twenty years, an' I was truly touched. I promised Millie I'd write, an' that Norma an' Grace could have the stamps for their collection.

The only person who didn't seem surprised was my daddy. He seemed to have known that this day would come all along. He just looked me in the eye, man to man, father to son, an' told me that my test had come. I was gonna have to make it on my own.

An' I ain't scared. Any doubts that I might have had vanished as soon as he said that. My daddy hadn't been afraid to go. An' neither will I.


End file.
